


Dance

by Avelera



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Angst, Ballroom Dancing, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Londo Mollari will see himself die many times, this is only the first. That night he watched himself die in the eyes of the only woman he married for love. It's a collapse of courage, of confidence, the first step on the road down. But at the time all he knew is that he would never dance again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the lovely Amatara.
> 
> This fic was inspired the Vitamin Strings Quartet's rendition of "Dance, Dance" by Fallout Boy, and subsequently by the original song when I realized how perfectly the lyrics match Londo's doomed love for his first wife, the dancer. I highly recommend a listen.

The band ceased their Court dances and the pace picked up. Joia’s eyes sparkled with love – for him, yes, but also for the game, the competition, the flash of slender limbs and whirling skirts that entranced and intoxicated. In her eyes was that glint of fire that had him down on his knees at first sight.

 

Paso Leati, Urza called him; the name was not just for ferocity but the way he moved with silent, cat-like steps. She was light on his arm, he did not even feel her weight as he clasped her about the waist and with one arm dipped and caught her in a smooth motion. It was his hearts that were leaden, and she was a feather in comparison. 

 

He faltered and caught himself, one half step behind. They had always fit together as if born to it, the perfect partners that matched each step like a shadow. His slight stumble might as well have been a collapse; as they came together her eyes searched his, brows drawing together. He snapped his arm and sent her whirling before she could see the words that must surely be written across his face.

 

Time moved strangely, one moment swift, the next slow, with the painful sweetness of knowing they would part soon, but for now she was here and he’d be damned if he wasted a precious second of this night on his own self-loathing, on his own blinding misery. As she spun, the time slowed to the legato stretch of a single crying note and she was drifting away. His breath caught and his hearts must have stopped as she grew smaller. He knew he had stopped dancing and was standing, frozen, like a dumbstruck fool at the center of the room, one hand still suspended where he had released her. The hand hovered in his vision, engulfed it. His fingers flexed and in the slow manner of dreams they reached forward, grasping, and blotted her from sight.

 

He jerked back with a strangled noise caught in his throat, staring at the palm of his hand, his wedding ring glinting in the light. Then he felt a light pressure on his arm and Joia was there.

 

The other dancers whirled about them in a riot of gaily-colored dresses and coats but the two of them were frozen. “Londo…” she said. Her voice was soft. Years later he would tell a friend, a man in pain, that her voice was shrill. It would be only one of many betrayals. She was a dancer, and low born, but not a fool. “Something is wrong.”

 

It was not a question. The sparks of life in her eyes darkened and he could see the question forming. She was wondering if she was mistaken, if she was the mistake. 

 

He took her hand, tried to reclaim the dream, the flow and movement of sound that became notes, became music. He knew what he wanted: it was to step back into the dream. But it was winding down, receding, its tatters like dead leaves in the wind.And, as in dreams, opening eyes stole the memory moment by moment. He made one last grasp, reaching to place a hand at her waist.

 

She caught his hand, pinching his palm between the long fingers. The dance ended. The last note was a bell, and it rolled golden and bright, catching the moment in amber. 

 

He had been wrong about one thing and he would be wrong about many more, but for the first time it dosed him with shame. Joia already knew, had known from the moment he took her hand that night. His true dance partner, she could feel it in his hands and the arms that encircled her. Unlike him, she was too wise to allow for hope, she had torn it out before it could put down roots. Her dark eyes held no expectation. She only waited for the inevitable.

 

He opened his mouth knowing his words would fail him, and it was another first in this new life that was forming beneath his feet with each failed step in their unraveling dance. There was no one to charm, cajole, or buy. There was no House Mollari to put a word in the right ear, to ease the way for their oldest son, their heir of infinite possibility. For the first time he saw past the glory of his great name, and became aware of the chain that grounded it, bending him to the will of his house more tightly than any slave.

 

His father’s words rang in his memory. _Who are you without your title? Nothing. Do you think she will want you without your House?_  


 

He didn’t know. His courage was slipping in the face of her silence and when he closed his eyes to catch his breath he saw himself as if in a mirror, cracks racing through him as if he was glass. He saw the young man who had dueled with Urza, who had led the raid on Frallis XII, and saw him breaking. Dashing they had called him, and dashing he had swept up a dancing girl from obscurity and made her his bride, placing the saffron wedding veil on her head the same day. Would that man put aside his wife for the sake of a title? 

 

He would not, and Londo knew then he was no longer that man. He was young and afraid, and the world swayed, as if he had been cut off at the knee. He knew fear then, the fear that he would never walk again. He already knew he would never dance. But wasn’t this better?  Better never to know if his father was right, better to let her hate him than to wonder which would have stung her more, the loss of his title or the loss of him. He put up his first wall against guilt, and resolved to move past it, to never look back. 

 

His voice cracked as he removed her hand. “I’m sorry, my dove.”

 

He forced himself to watch as he died in her eyes. It was the first of many small deaths, from fear, and circumstances, from excuses and doubts. That night he dreamed his final death for the first time, as if it was finally set in stone.

 


End file.
